Human Evolution in 5 Skeletons

I wrote this paper 20 years ago!

Evolution Vs. Creationism

Frances H. Arnold Nobel Lecture

If you are or know a graduate student, pay particular attention to this starting at around 17:55.

2018 Chemistry Nobel Prize Winner Frances H. Arnold

Dr. Jennifer Doudna in conversation with Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee

Darwin and Lincoln born same day, same year.

Two hundred and five years ago today the men pictured above simultaneously drew their first breaths.  Like the coincidental death of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson today's anniversary serves to give thinking minds a pause. A pause to reflect on the balance between CHANCE and WILL. When we think about the birth of Lincoln and Darwin we know this coincidence was purely a product of chance. There was no conscious connection between Lincoln's mother Nancy and Darwin's mother Susannah helping random chance along during the winter of 1809. There was however a strong conscious connection, a willful awareness of time between Adams and Jefferson who had been in regular correspondence as they laid in their deathbeds. Both Adams and Jefferson were ill prior to the day of their mutual death but somehow willed themselves to survive to see the fiftieth anniversary of the birth of the great experiment on July 4th, 1826. Similarly Lincoln and Darwin both spent large parts of their lives fighting chance itself. Through the power of intellect they lead and changed the flow of ideas through written and spoken word.

Even more perplexing than a shared birth is the relationship between the social effects originating from this pair. Lincoln's visage stirs up thoughts of equality and emancipation, while Darwin's work drives home the fact that all organisms are engaged in a struggle for existence and do not begin life with equal footing. This does indeed include man. So here we see the dichotomy between equality before the law and inequality before nature.

I would like to make it clear that I think it self-evident that the preservation of equality before the law is paramount for a sustainable democracy. It would take volumes to address here the complex attitudes of the public towards the idea of social Darwinism but it is easy to summarize an average public opinion regarding one massive case in which an attempt was made to apply social Darwinism to a population by a governing body. That summary is - pure evil. The specter of EUGENICS and Nazi death camps haunts and pervades collective memory. The idea that man can judge the worthiness of a human life repulses modern senses. But even now the beginnings of a rift in the genetic constitution of humanity is beginning with a whisper in the esoteric and often-times inaccessible language of clinical genetics.

Here I present the most pertinent and contemporary application of the ideas of Lincoln and Darwin. The practice of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis or PGD gives a prospective mother the ability to choose genetic characteristics she wishes to eliminate from here offspring. Simply put, multiple embryos are fertilized, tested, and the one free of the undesirable gene (like breast or colon cancer predisposition) is selected for implantation and a human that has been selected based on genetic constitution is born. This is not something 50 or 100 years away. It is happening now. Before I lose readers that say "no no no that is horrible. It should be banned" it should be known that this technique is not ubiquitous and is not currently being used for genes like eye color or obesity, but is mostly used for the colo-rectal and breast cancer genes.

If you had a decision to remove something from your life that gave you a 50:50 chance of getting cancer at age 40 would you remove it? Maybe not, but it is not unethical to want to do that and parents with children that are a product of PGD should not be condemned for their decision. They are using science to protect their children and that is something all people should have the right to do. The major ethical concern here is access. Right now there is no federal regulation surrounding PGD and as a result insurance companies can deny PGD to parents. If this trend continues there will be a genetic difference between families that have the money to pay for the procedure (>$10,000) and those that do not. A world where a genetic rift mirrors the financial rift in society is not a world where equality reigns. May this day be a day to contemplate and compose legislation guaranteeing the right of all families to protect their children, not just those that can afford the cost.

Subsequently, I would like to share some of the highlights from the web regarding both Lincoln and Darwin. Doris Kearns Goodwin articulates the philosophy of life after death through memorable acts and words in the following video. This forms the basis for the title of this blog "Tom Paine's Ghost." I do not believe an ectoplasmic glowing form of Thomas Paine floats in the aether, but I do believe that his pen keeps his spirit alive centuries after his death.



I am currently reading the Origin of Species in and I must say it takes a while to dig into. The first 40 pages are dedicated to a rather dry topic - pigeons. Specifically the un-natural process of pigeon breeding which is controlled by man. The first breath of literary gravity did not come for me until page 76 when Darwin describes the adaptations of some particular organisms.

"How have all those exquisite adaptations of one part of the organisation to another part, and to the conditions of life, and of one distinct organic being to another being, been perfected? We see these beautiful co-adaptations most plainly in the woodpecker and mistletoe; and only a little less plainly in the humblest parasite which clings to the hairs of a quadruped or feathers of a bird; in the structure of the beetle which dives through the water; in the plumed seed which is wafted by the gentlest breeze; in short, we see beautiful adaptations everywhere and in every part of the organic world."

This post was first made here February 12th, 2009. I've made a few minor edits to catch it up-to-date.

Brian Greene & Richard Dawkins discuss God.

Richard Dawkins and the Electric Kool-Aid Acid MEME

Watch the following video all the way through. A metamorphosis of sorts unfolds before our very eyes.

Glowing Plant Update

Last week I told you about a new Kickstarter Project that promises seeds for a glowing plant in the mail. As a PostDoc in an Arabidopsis lab, of course I funded it. So watch out, I will be blogging the process of growing these glowing seedlings as soon as the embryos arrive (sometime in 2014).

I was not the only one to show this project love. In three days the project creators reached their goal of $65,000. Now they have 39 days left to let the money keep on rolling in. This Kickstarter is so noteworthy because it appears to be the first serious Synthetic Biology project made possible by crowd-funding. Check out the video to get up to date on the status of the project.

Personal Genome Project: Joining the "Lunatic Fringe"

We came to donate our living genomes to science.  On April 25th, 2013 (DNA Day as it were) we submitted blood and spit to the Personal Genome Project (PGP). The PGP is the brainchild of George Church (pictured above). A professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School George is also a loveable bearded teddy bear.  The goal of this project is to sequence 100,000 whole human genomes.  I think they have successfully completed somewhere in the ~2,500 range.  There is also an underlying cultural movement among the "lunatic fringe" early-adopters like us. This is a movement towards open access. Our bodies are our data and we would like the keys to the car please. How appropriate then that I came to find out about the PGP via a facebook comment made to me by none other than Open Access gangsta Jonathan Eisen.

As I'm sitting in a hostel room and the sun is shining I want to go out and make the most of this rare occasion to enjoy Boston, visit firefly bicycles, ride along the Charles River, loose ourselves in the bowels of the Harvard Bookstore.  That being said, forgive the brevity of the post. I will be back with plenty more pictures I snapped at the GET conference this past Thursday and Friday and more personal genomics stories.

Cheers!

Mating Display

Jason Silva delivers a new "cinematic espresso shot."

Here Jason shares his enthusiasm for a variation of the "handicap principle."

This hypothesis was originally proposed in 1975 by biologist Amotz Zahavi.

Think conspicuous consumption.

When it comes to sexual-selection the mating display itself is the hadicap. Huge indigo tail-feathers, an egregiously expensive engagement ring or a PhD are possible example "handicaps." Squandering precious resources (metabolic energy, money or time) just to show you are capable of shouldering a heavy burden makes you more attractive to the opposite sex. Or so the theory goes.

Silva attributes a version of this hypothesis to Geoffrey Miller an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico.

Curious to hear what my readers think of this idea.

Are our brains such amazing computers because we just have a burning desire to get laid?

Evolution Remixed - from Carl Sagan's Cosmos

ENCODE DECODED

Problem with the Trolley Problem

Social Creatures

The individual vs. group-selection debate is a "can of worms" as Frans de Waal recently put it.

Do I think there is a genetic component to cooperation? Yes, probably. Is there a special set of genes in ants, ambrosia beetles and human beings that make us uniquely social creatures? I don't know.

When I first read Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene I took away much inspiration. The clarity with which he writes leads the reader to a sense of certitude on how genes proliferate and persist. In an era of rampant disparity in global science literacy it is good to have sure-footed thinkers at the forefront of science communication. As my friend John Romano said recently "Evolution is a theory like gravity is a theory." It is a good thing to have people shouting this from the rooftops.

But, as Jacob Bronowski echos in my mind "science is a tribute to what we can know, although we are fallible" I can not help but think that giving people certainty instead of training them in the ability to think critically for themselves may be more harmful to the spread of science in the long run. The kind of in-fighting that happens about the details gets interpreted by the public at large as - there is no scientific consensus on evolution. When it comes to "paradigm-shifts" in evolutionary biology you often see the tribal side of scientists come out. Camps are formed, lines drawn, fires lit.

E.O. Wilson makes a valid criticism of Dawkins - he has not practiced research science in decades, nor has he had a peer-reviewed paper published in quite some time.

The counter-criticism of Wilson is that his recent switch to embracing a form of "group-selection"  the as-yet-to-be defined "Multi-level selection" may be unwittingly urged by dollar signs in the form of Templeton Foundation money funneled toward his in silico collaborator Martin Nowak. Not to mention the potential to bump up book sales when a book is branded "controversial." (Read more about the Templeton Foundation here.)

Whenever we try to put words on top of natural phenomena there are certain aspects of the concept that get lost in translation as words are by their very nature metaphors. I think this is what is happening to concepts like "inclusive fitness" and "group selection." They are fuzzy all-encompassing terms for broader processes evolutionary biologists are trying to reconcile through observation. This phenomenon of chasing catch-phrases is harmful to science in my opinion. It predisposes researchers to pursue sexy but poorly defined buzz-words rather than novel questions.

If you want to read more about the academic brawl surrounding E.O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins and "group selection" fellow Blogger Eric Michael Johnson has a wonderfully comprehensive piece on his Scientific American blog.   I have also attempted to cover this before.

A Geologist Paints Darwin

A Must Watch - The REVISIONARIES

Watch The Revisionaries on PBS. See more from Independent Lens.

"Lies from the pit of hell" guy won.

Rep. Paul Broun (R-Georgia) is seen in the video below proclaiming evolution, embryology, and the big bang “lies straight from the pit of Hell." AND, he just won reelection in Georgia's 10th congressional district (recently gerrymandered, I might add).

His reelection was not gained without scorn in the national media. As several major news agencies reported over 4,000 of his constituents wrote in "Charles Darwin" on the ballot.

Did his opponent get Nadered by Darwin?

No, sadly Broun would have won despite the shenanigans as he was running unopposed. Though his thumbs are still opposable.

As I am about to move to Georgia to begin a PostDoc at Emory I am frightened by this kind of person being my neighbor. But I hereby take up the challenge to bring the scientific method and reasoned argument with me in full force. I'm sure Georgia is rife with fossils for me to show them.

Watch out Georgia, here comes Tom Paine's Ghost!

Congressman - evolution and bing bang "lies from the pit of Hell!"

Rep. Paul Broun (R-Georgia) is seen in the video below saying that evolution, embryology, and the big bang are “lies straight from the pit of Hell”. The scariest part of this is that he is a current member of the Science Committee of the House of Representatives! No wonder we are lagging international in science education. We have young earth creationists operating at the upper echelons of our federal government!

Obama and the Young Biologist - Samantha Garvey

During President Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention he mentioned several people who give him hope. One was a high school student doing cutting-edge research in evolutionary biology despite the fact that she lived in a homeless shelter while starting it.

“The young woman I met at a science fair who won national recognition for her biology research while living with her family at a homeless shelter, she gives me hope.”

 Her name is Samantha Garvey and her story gives me hope too.